


NRE

by sabinelagrande



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Adorable Cecil, Carlos Is Also Adorable, M/M, New Relationship Energy, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 10:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1185152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/pseuds/sabinelagrande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's quite an energetic phenomenon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	NRE

**Author's Note:**

> A little Valentine's thing for my ladyfriend. <3

The first time Cecil walks into the lab, it is a catastrophe.

He and Carlos are just casually chatting: the radio station, the latest experiments, whether Cecil should adopt a floating cat, nothing particularly different than usual. Carlos goes in first, holding the door open for Cecil to go through.

The second Cecil steps through the heavy, shielded doors, everything in the lab goes haywire. All the alarms that Carlos has on anything blare at once, and several things start smoking that Carlos didn't even know could smoke. Things are shaking off the shelves; the hand on the dial on one of his heavily-modified geiger counters spins right off its support.

"Run!" Carlos shouts over the din, shoving Cecil out the door and dashing out after him. When they're outside, he pushes Cecil to the floor, urging him away from the doorway.

"Your lab is _very_ energetic," Cecil says, in that impressed and slightly turned on way that he does when things involve science.

"It's not supposed to do that," Carlos tells him. "It's usually much quieter."

"Oh," Cecil says, looking a little let down. "Well, that's probably for the best. It would be hard to get any work done."

"I have to fix this," Carlos says reluctantly. "Is it okay if we pick this back up tomorrow?"

"Of course," Cecil says. He sounds disappointed but kisses Carlos anyway, lingering and sweet. Carlos wants to say fuck it and go home with him, but there's science to be done.

After a long moment, Cecil stands, giving Carlos a hand up, and Carlos kisses him again before he lets him go. Cecil smiles at him brightly, looking over his shoulder at Carlos as he walks away, and Carlos turns his focus back to the lab. He peers carefully into one of the thick windows of the doors, but nothing is moving, no sound coming through.

Carlos has, understandably, gotten more careful in the light of certain events, and he grabs one of the kevlar vests that are stashed in the shed behind the lab, a precaution that really they should have had anyway, given that this is Night Vale. He puts it on before opening one of the lab doors, carefully slipping in, crouching quickly so that he's out of the range of most of the more angry and reactive machines, staying quiet just in case.

Five minutes later, he's still crouching there, but by now he's feeling like an idiot. He stands up carefully, looking around the room. Some of the machines are still smoking gently, but otherwise things seem to have calmed. Most of the stuff that's store-bought is fine, but the jury-rigged black boxes he's made over the years haven't fared as well. 

He tries over and over to replicate the conditions, everything short of calling Cecil back over, but at the end of the night, he's left with no explanation and a bunch of things to fix. It's a feeling that's become very familiar in Night Vale.

Carlos thinks about it often over the next few days, but he comes to no conclusion. He hates having to chalk things up to "That's Night Vale for you", but this may have to be one of those cases.

\--

The other scientists are running late; okay, actually, Carlos is running early. Cecil went in earlier than usual to the station, and Carlos didn't feel quite like lying around in bed without him in it, so here he is, doing some warm-up experiments while no one is around.

Slowly, they begin to trickle in, but it isn't particularly interesting. They're entering at fairly normal rates, at intervals that are probably underlyingly non-random, but still not really worthy of any close study.

But then one of the younger scientists walks in, and an alarm goes off, flashing and beeping shrilly. It's on one of the instruments Carlos had to repair after the incident with Cecil, one that's never been quite the same since.

"Whatever you just did, do it again," Carlos tells her quickly. "It's very important."

"Sorry, I meant to come in early, but I, um, ran out of time," Perneet says, blushing. "Madeline and I made it official last night."

Carlos frowns. "That's great, but what does it have to do with anything?"

"We have to account for the NRE," she says, like he's supposed to know what that means. "New relationship energy?" she offers, at his confused look. "Is this going to be one of those only-in-Night-Vale things?"

"Probably," Carlos allows.

Five minutes later they're standing in front of the collected herd of scientists, who are milling about and looking curious, as scientists are wont to do.

"If you're from Night Vale, please move to your left," Carlos announces. "If you're not, please move to your right. If you are not in a relationship with at least one other corporeal being, please leave the area." General shuffling occurs. "Okay. Within your local categories, please arrange yourself in duration of relationship." There's more shuffling, long enough that Carlos starts tapping his foot. "This isn't hard."

"Give us a minute," one of the scientists says, and Carlos sighs.

Eventually they get their acts together, and Carlos picks up his chaos-o-meters, one for him and one for Justin, who is single and technically a sentient plant, and therefore probably the best choice as far as an unbiased observer goes. "When you are tested," he announces, "please hold still and envision your romantic partner or partners."

Justin starts first, waving his meter back and forth over the scientists from out of town, examining them one by one. "I've got nothing," he says, after he's studied all of them to a reasonable degree of satisfaction for a preliminary experiment. "Not a blip."

"Mark it down," Carlos says, though he's already writing. "Beginning secondary testing."

He starts at Perneet, and the meter immediately picks something up. "I have sixty-eight degrees chaos," Carlos calls to Justin, and the Night Valien scientists seem quite impressed. "Moving to the next subject."

He works his way down the line, all the way down to Edgar, who's been married for years but still reads at thirty-seven, which everyone seems to find sweet.

"There seems to be a weak correlation between duration of relationship and degree of chaos," Justin says, looking over the notes. "It's definitely promising."

"I still don't understand," Carlos wonders aloud. "It was a much more energetic reaction when Cecil came in-"

"You brought Cecil in here?" one of the scientists says, shocked. "Why didn't you start with that?"

"How did you keep the whole place from burning down?" another marvels.

"I was trying to be scientific," Carlos says, frowning unhappily. "This is an unknown phenomenon."

Justin crosses his arms- or his arm-like branches. " _We_ knew about it."

"You know what I mean," Carlos says, waving a hand. "We'll have to do more testing to consider the impact of the extra chaos on the equipment."

"You know, we spend approximately fifteen percent of our time doing just that," a scientist says.

"Sixteen point three percent," Carlos says. "But if we're not precise, then what are we?"

"A high school chemistry class, a fashion model, and a talking plant," one of them says.

"You're not funny," Carlos replies.

\--

"So unfortunately, I can't let you come back to the lab for a while," Carlos finishes. "I know I promised you could visit, but I don't think it's a good idea for you to come back until the NRE wears off."

"So you're saying I can't come back to the lab?" Cecil asks sadly.

"That's not what I'm saying," Carlos says. "We just need to wait until you're a little-" Carlos looks for a word- "calmer about our relationship."

"But Carlos," Cecil says. "If we have to wait for that, then I'll never be able to come back."

Carlos can't help but kiss him then, though he feels a little bad for finding Cecil's despair so adorable. "It's okay," Carlos tells him. "If you want to, we'll do some experiments of our own."

"I am _very_ into science," Cecil says, putting his hands on Carlos's hips and pulling him close.

"I am very into _you_ ," Carlos says. "As well as science. But mostly you."

Cecil kisses him, and Carlos thinks about all the ways that he can combine his two great loves- laboratory optional.


End file.
